Five Houses Down

I loved his ten demented chickensand the hell-eyed dog, the mailboxshaped like a huge green gun.I loved the eyesore opulenceof his five partial cars, the wonder-cluttered porchwith its oilspill plumage, toolscauled in oil, the darkclockwork of disassembled engineschristened Sweet Baby and benedicted Old Bitch;and down the steps into the yard the explosionof mismatched parts and black scrapsamid which, like a bad sapper cloakedin luck, he would look up stunned,patting the gut that slopped out of his undershirtand saying, Son,you lookin’ to make some scratch?All afternoon we’d pile the flatbed highwith stacks of Exxon floormatsmysteriously stencilled with his name,rain-rotted sheetrock or milesof misfitted pipes, coil after coilof rusted fencewire that stained for daysevery crease of me, rollicking it allto the dump where, while he calledevery ragman and ravened junkdog by name,he catpicked the avalanche of trashand fished some always fixable thingup from the depths. Somethingabout his endless aimless workwas not work, my father said.Somehow his barklike earthquake curseswere not curses, for he could goddama slipped wrench and shitfuck a stuck latch,but one bad word from memade his whole beingtwang like a nail mis-struck. Aint no call for that,son, no call at all. Slipknot, whatknot, knotfrom which no man escapes—prestoed back to plain old rope;whipsnake, blacksnake, deep in the wormdirtworms like the clutch of mud:I wanted to live foreverfive houses downin the womanless rooms a womansometimes seemed to move through, leaving himtwisting a hand-stitched dishtowelor idly wiping the volcanic dust.It seemed like heaven to me:beans and weenies from paper plates,black-fingered tinkerings on the back stoopas the sun set, on an upturned fruitcratea little jamjar of rye like ancient light,from which, once, I took a single, secret sip,my eyes tearing and my throat on fire.